Category: Nextcloud

Update: There is a note for existing users below (gray screen problem).

We have just set live our updated Collabora server, all users who have booked the Collabora Online Addon can benefit from many new features. Here is a list of some, you can find many more in the linked blog posts from Collabora below:

Nextcloud 13 is here (in fact 13.0.1)

Early this month we finished migration of all Portknox clouds to Nextcloud 13 and with it nearly all apps have got an update. As you can see in our applist, Portknox now offers 41 supported apps.

Nextcloud Talk

One of the biggest enhancements is Nextcloud Talk which adds video & audio-conferencing to Nextcloud.

Please note that you will need a TURN server to communicate with users behind routers or firewalls. We offer an addon which is easy to setup.

End-to-end Encryption

Nextcloud 13 also adds a feature for client side encryption as a tech preview. We will test and follow the progress closely. Right now we don't ship this app to our customers, but it looks as if we will soon.

Whats next at Portknox?

Right now we are migrating clouds to our improved infrastructure. As every Portknox cloud is self-contained and isolated this needs to be done from time to time. We have done this in past, too.

Get your Nextcloud free for 14 days

If you want to test your own up2date Nextcloud you can now try Portknox.net for 14 days.

Get your Nextcloud free for 14 days

QOwnNotesAPI added

One of the most requested addons is the advanced API for QOwnNotes. As soon as you enable the API in your Portknox cloud, you are able to use versioning and access to your trashed notes. Here is a screenshot of the QOwnNotes desktop app (it works on all plattforms):

Calendar update to 1.5.6

This minor update fixes bugs with timezones, UI and the sharing. Here is the full changelog.

Deck update to 1.2.4

Another minor update with UI and bug fixes.

Nextcloud update 12.0.3

All clouds will get the update to the most recent maintenance release.

Please note that we update customer clouds in batches, if your cloud does not have the new apps yet, give us some more days :)

Always up2date applist

At our applist you can see which app in which version is installed on Portknox. We have now automated the way our applist is generated, after every Nextcloud or app update the list gets regenerated. Right now it's possible to activate 43 apps!

Whoever wants to join the Mail app team is welcome, and the best is: you don’t have to be a developer. We need people for translating, testing etc. Don’t hesitate to contact us on IRC or jump in and clone the repository.

As promised in the first blog post about the Nextcloud App Ecosystem, here comes the second one about all the official Nextcloud Apps that are disabled by default.

To understand the different types of apps better, I would categorize them as following so far:

Official Nextcloud app:
A Nextcloud app is called official when it’s developed/maintained by Nextcloud GmbH and shipped in the Nextcloud server package. Some official apps are enabled.

Approved Nextcloud app
A Nextcloud App is called approved when it comes from a third party entity and is shipped in the Nextcloud server package.

Apps from the Nextcloud app store.
In Nextcloud version 11, an app store will be integrated. I don’t know yet how these apps will be called in the future.

This blog post covers official Nextcloud apps which are disabled by default:

Default encryption module

External sites

External storage support

External user support

File access control

Files automated tagging

Gallery

LDAP user and group backend

Retention

SAML authentication

If you just read the names and you are not familiar with the Nextcloud project you might struggling to understand what these apps are for, why they are not enabled and whether it is a good or a bad idea to enable them. I’ll go through these apps, provide a short description and, if possible a common use case and some screenshots.

Default encryption module

I’m not sure why this package is called a module, it should be called an app, an official app!

As you may assume this app is about security. After enabling the app and server-side encryption in the administration settings, all your new uploaded files will be encrypted based on AES 256 keys (How secure are AES-256 encrypted files?), the app won’t touch existing files.Attention: It is not possible to disable the encryption again and switch back to an unencrypted system!
Please read the documentation to know all implications before you decide to enable server-side encryption.

Enable server-side encryption

External sites

This app allows an administrator to add links in the Nextcloud web interface apps menu that points to an external website. For a user, the external site appears in an iframe as if it’s part of the Nextcoud installation.

External Sites – ConfigurationExternal website in an iframe

External storage support

The external storage support app enables administrators to configure connections to external storage providers (FTP , Amazon S3, SWIFT object stores, Google Drive, Dropbox, other Nextcloud servers, WebDAV servers, and more). Administrators can choose which types of storage to enable and can mount these storage locations for a user, a group, or the entire system. The screenshot shows an example with external storage via SFTP.

External Storage Configuration

Users will see a new folder appearing in their root Nextcloud directory, which they can access and use it like any other Nextcloud folder.

External Storage in Files

External user support

This app authenticates user login against FTP, IMAP or SMB. Passwords are not stored locally and authentication always happens against the remote server. There is no graphical user interface for configuration. You have to add parameters to the configuration file config.php.
Have a look at the documentation.

File access control

This app controls the access to files. It can be used e.g. in relationship with the two factor authentication app (an approved app – TOTP TwoFactor (Google Authenticator)) because it’s necessary to protect the keys. I’ll cover this topic in a separate blog post.
Meanwhile, have a look at Joas blog post on Nextcloud.com – File Access Control – A firewall for your private files in Nextcloud.

Files automated tagging

The app automatically assigns tags to newly uploaded files based on conditions. Combined with Files Access Control App and Retention App it’s possible to create workflows like

converting document file types to PDF upon upload by members of a specified group

emailing files put in a specified folder with a given tag to a given mail address.

Conclusion

The official but not enabled apps are often covering special use cases like the whole authentication and workflow handling. Even if these are not “main stream use cases” it’s important and crucial to know that these solutions exist for using Nextcloud efficiently in your company!

tl;dr: The Nextcloud 10 server package comes with several official apps that are not all enabled by default but awesome!

Last Saturday at Nextcloud conference in Berlin the Nextcloud Box was announced. Frank said it’s a part of his promise/desire to make the world a better place by bringing your data home.

How can the world be a better place with Nextcloud Box?

What is Nextcloud Box?

Nextcloud Box is a project between Western Digital Labs, Ubuntu/Canonical and Nextcloud GmbH. It gives you the possibility to store your data (files, documents, photos, calendars, notes, newsfeed, contacts, music files, video files and everything the can be stored in a file) in your own Nextcloud Box. There is no need anymore to upload your data to proprietary cloud services like Dropbox, Google Cloud, Microsoft Cloud, Apple Cloud, Amazon Cloud, and many other! It will be even possible in the next release to make encrypted phone calls via your Nextcloud Box.

The complete Nextcloud Box contains a hard disk, an operating system, and open source software:

a hard disk from Western Digital (1TB = a lot for me)

a Raspberry Pi computer (at the moment model 2).The Raspberry Pi is so far not included in the box you can buy.

a 4GB storage card with a preinstalled Linux System (Snappy Ubuntu Core)

the Nextcloud software (Version 9.53)

a software environment that connects the box automatically to your (local) network via ethernet cable and offers the Nextcloud services to all users.

A complete Nextcloud Box looks like this and costs 70 Euro in Europe (buy here).

Open Nextcloud Box

Why is it sold without the Raspberry Pi?

Nextcloud box should be as open as possible so the partners decided for the start not to deliver the Raspberry Pi. If you already own one you can connect your Raspberry Pi 2 to the box. There is a screw driver, four screws, all necessary connection cables and a power supply in the box. If not, you have to buy it somewhere. Frank announced that there are working on a possibility to sell complete packages in the future.

All parts of Nextcloud Box

Putting everything together is easy and doable for everyone. If you search for the card slot at the Raspberry Pi – It’s a bit hidden “below” it and luckily it’s not possible to insert the card in the wrong way.

Card Slot – Raspberry Pi

This it how it looks if everything is connected

connected Nextcloud Box

The last task is to close the box with the cover and your done.

How to install Nextcloud Box

Well, just connect it to your network, provide electricity and wait 8-10 minutes. Open your browser and point to http://ubuntu-standard.local. The start screen asks to set a user name and a password for the administrator account. Enter na nice name and secure password and click the Finish setup button.

connect Nextcloud Box to your clients

Allow access from outside your home and become a cloud hoster

If you have a fairly fast internet connection at home and a possibility to configure your router, you can enable the access to your Nextcloud Box from outside of your home. E.g. here in France it’s possible to get your own IP-address for free (free.fr). As this IP-address is static it’s possible to connect it to a domain name (mydomainname.tld) and you suddenly become a cloud hosting entity.

Why is Nextcloud Box important?

It’s another try to help people to understand how easy it is to store your own data at home or in your own company in an environment as open as possible. Even the plan of the box is available for free, so that you are able to start your own project!

Remember …

There is no cloud, just other people’s computer!

The familiar you become with your own data, the better it will be for the world too!

Jos opened the conference with a few words, Frank, Joe and Jane repeated their announcements of the Nextcloud box and 50 boxes are available to buy here at the conference for 70 Euro. The missing RaspberryPi is provided for free. Frank said, that he’s looking for a possibility to sell Nextcloud Box as a complete package.

Lightning talks

Some lightning talks were held to introduce Nextcloud people, their responsibilities and offer possibilities to contribute (Lukas Reschke , Morris Jobke, Bjoern Schiessle). Bjoern did an additional and inspiring talk about “what’s special in Nextcloud”.

Workshop Collabora – Michael Meeks

Michael Meeks gave answers to very detailed questions from the audience. I didn’t understood everything but the way collabora office suite works is now a bit clearer for me. There was a longer discussion how to integrate Collabora in Nextcloud in a “better, easier and faster” way.

Fair web services – Cornelius Schumacher

Fair web services was the last workshop I attend and the topic reminded me why I’m at this conference. Years ago I wanted to backup my photos on Flickr. Backup in the sense of keeping album structures and EXIF data. I tried OwnCloud but it didn’t work. I discovered that OwnCloud was a perfect solution for other projects of mine and so I used it until June. The Flickr backup problem is still unsolved. It’s possible to access my data via API but so far I found nothing that really works for me (may be time to write a Flickr import app for Nextcloud). Today there is also an additional “iTunes Cloud Match” problem. But back to the talk.

There are a number of attempts to solve the problems of freedom of web services. This is a list of relevant references.

None of the solutions is complete yet or has enough traction to serve as a widely accepted solution … The idea is to create criteria for a certification of services. The certification would allow providers to show that they respect the freedom of users and give users a guideline about what services to use.

“I have read and agree to the Terms” is the biggest lie on the web. We aim to fix that. https://tosdr.org

In the workshop I met Marcos Garcia Pedraza, Co-Founder of Patria Digitalis. He wants to offer “fair” services, so it starts and I have a good ok feeling!

At the airport

As I mentioned above I’m not able to attend the whole week, so meanwhile I’m at the airport Berlin Schoenefeld, my Laptop was scanned for drugs, I had to show every piece of my Nextcloud box to the border police. The boarding pass that I printed out in France had the wrong “format” and the plane has a delay. The good news is that Dennis and his friends will come next week to Fitou for a short vacation.

Now I have a little bit time to think about this project that started 6 years ago to make the world a better place.
So far it was an interesting journey!

I had no idea what to expect from this conference but something inside said to me

Go to Berlin, it’s important!

So I went to Berlin to attend at least two days of the conference at Technische Universität. The Berlin Technische Universität is one of the largest and most prestigious research and education institutions in Germany and for a whole week the center of the growing Nextcloud community.

Technische Universität Berlin

The future of Nextcloud

In Frank Karlitscheks talk about the future of Nextcloud he also talked about sustainability and the way how Nextcloud will develop in the next 20! years:

During the talk, he showed Nextcloud 10 features und someone from the audience asked when this version with all these nice features will be released (easy answer, it was released a few weeks ago). In the meantime Klaas tweeted two feature request

Features requests via Twitter

Security Architecture

Lukas Reschke talked about Nextcloud security architecture. I liked the idea that the same developers who wrote the code are responsible for fixing their own bugs.

Federation

Bjoern Schiessle is working since four years on the federation subject and showed an overview of the ideas behind the concept and it’s future.

In Nextcloud, it’s possible to share your files with a remote user. A remote user is a user in another personal cloud installation that supports the federation concept (e.g. Nextcloud, OwnCloud, Pydio). To share a file you have to insert the cloud ID of that user [username]@[domain] and Nextcloud sends a notification to the remote user. The remote user can decide whether he wants to accept the share.
You find your own Cloud ID in your Nextcloud profile page. Share it!

MySql Database Scalability

Oli Sennhauser (FromDual) gave a talk about MySQL database scalability. The interesting thing for me was that he was not familiar with the Nextcloud software. So he asked users and developers in the audience questions how Nextcloud is handling this and that. Based on the answers he described possible problems and solutions.

After the lunch break I missed half of Artur Schiwons talk about User Management in Nextcloud. Nextcloud has a variety of authentication mechanisms needed to fit comfortably in the diverse enterprise authentication landscape. I learned some new abbreviations: LDAP, SAML, ODP, ….

Nextcloud Scalability with a concept design for 10.000 users

This talk was interesting too because Dennis Pennings (360ict.nl) is planning to set up a huge Nextcloud installation. He researched a lot about possible solutions and he had plenty of question that were discussed at the end together with Frank and the audience.

If you are in Berlin this weekend use the opportunity to join us (Straße des 17. Juni 135)! Don’t miss Friday 6pm – We’ll gather in the main room for the announcement of… well, a surprise!
After that: free drinks and snacks!

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